Motherhood - Your Complimentary Management Training

Discover the remarkable parallels between motherhood and management with me. Let’s discuss how the skills acquired through parenting can benefit your professional career. This post is the start of an exploration of the transferable skills that make motherhood an invaluable training ground for effective management. I will delve into the intersection of motherhood and managerial roles. In the posts to come, let’s highlight the skills and experiences from motherhood that can enhance your capabilities as a leader .

My Simultaneous Journey of Managerial Responsibility and Motherhood

My promotion to manager became official the same month that I later found out I was pregnant for the first time. It hit me a couple years into my first-born’s life that I had started to take official responsibility for other humans at the same time, both personally and professionally.

To become a manager I had to pass an Assessment Center. In preparation of it I studied various management and leadership theories, went through corporate training and did a lot of peer coaching with others also preparing for the same Assessment.

I read a lot about pregnancy and how to prepare for a natural birth. However, it was only this year that I picked up a parenting book.

It may have been the simultaneity, the intensive dealing with management and leadership on a theoretical level or the many moments of idle brain time when breast feeding, changing diapers and other ways of caring for a baby that led me to compare management lessons with motherhood and the other way around.

Motherhood as a Skill Building Experience

Recently, there was a discussion in Japan how maternity and/or childcare leave could be used to acquire new skills by taking re- or up-skilling courses to minimize the risk of career stagnation while raising children. Being on a year-long child care leave with my third baby, I am definitely wondering about my skills and employability. It was a little after my third baby was born that Chat GPT was in everyone’s mouth and it is therefore a very interesting time to be out of the workforce.

So, do I have to take any courses or can motherhood teach me useful skills? It seemed to be a common understanding that stay-at-home mothers have good organization and time management skills from the activities involved in running a household and family. Going through the first months and years of motherhood I now believe there are so many more skills that motherhood requires and therefore teaches you.

Turns out you don’t need any extra courses. Motherhood Is the New MBA and you can use your parenting skills to be a better boss or professional in general.

An Executive’s Perspective on Transferable Mom Skills

As mentioned above, in our company you have to go through an Assessment Center to be eligible for a management position. My mentor often quoted a woman to me who failed this AC the first time around. She then became a mom and soon passed the AC. He felt that becoming a mom had changed her to be a better manager. Continuing on, he listed many qualities she had gained from the first AC to the second due to becoming a mom in his opinion. Whether it was becoming a mom or simply studying and working towards passing the AC only she will know.

In a later conversation he shared with me that he prefers to work with working mommas as they are ‘tikkitakka’. They don’t have time to play around. There are deadlines to pick kids up which makes them more effective, as one example.

I am sharing this story to first of all show you that becoming a mom teaches you valuable skills for the workplace. Secondly, careers do not have to stall after having a baby but can continue to grow as this other MOM-MA(nager) showed me.

Top 29 Transferable Momma Skills

Before I ever actively thought about it, I feel like it was widely recognized that being a parent would further your organization and time management skills. Being a momma to three little girls as well as a manager in my company I’ve realized that there are so many more skills that are transferrable from motherhood to management and vice versa. So I got curious what the current understanding on skills being developed as a parent has become by today. When searching for “skills + motherhood + management” google gave me 55,100,000 results within 0.34 seconds.

I went through the first 4 pages of the results to find 21 results with list type articles mentioning transferable skills. Without reading the articles in full I listed all the skills mentioned. The result was an astonishing 54 skills that are seen as acquired or honed as a momma and are beneficial for your career.

See below the Top 29 skills I found based on them being listed in at least 2 separate articles. What do you think of the list? Do you agree? Do you find any skills missing?

Expanding the Skillset beyond the current List

In the word cloud you can see 29 of the 54 skills I have found other people referencing as a skill transferrable from motherhood to business. While the list is already quite long I find certain skills, activities and capabilities missing that I am applying in my role as a manager. Going forward I might share one article listing all 54 skills. More importantly though, I want to add my perspective on the skills that I believe are performed as both a manager and momma.

Conclusion

Each motherhood journey and each managerial role is different. But each bears the potential of motherhood as a complementary training ground for effective management. Embrace the transferable skills acquired through parenting to enhance your professional career. Stay tuned for an in-depth exploration of the missing skills and gain valuable insights into the overlapping roles of manager and momma. Sign up below to be notified when the expanded list of transferable mom skills is revealed. What have you learned from each that you are applying to the other? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Articles on transferable momma skills I skimmed

If you can’t wait to read more about Mom-Ma skills and for my perspective to find its way onto this blog, take a look at the articles and skills listed there: